Arcane, Netflix’s breakout animation series inspired by the videogame League of Legends, ended its first season last Sunday with an explosive cliffhanger. Although a second season has been confirmed, little is known about its plot details and release date, leading many fans (us included!) to speculate on the series’ future based on League’s in-game lore and short stories.
Before we jump into the theories, it’s important to keep in mind that series creators Alex Yee and Christian Linke have confirmed that Arcane is not currently considered canon to the main League of Legends universe, though they are open to integrating parts of the story into League in the future. Think of Arcane as the Marvel Cinematic Universe to League’s Marvel Comics – they may share the same characters and main plot beats, but some details may differ to better suit the story being told.
As a result, be sure to take these theories with a grain of salt, as Arcane has already shown us that the series is not afraid to make major changes to League’s established lore. Be warned that this article will contain spoilers for Arcane, as well as possible spoilers for its future seasons.
Viktor’s Glorious Evolution is coming
One of the biggest surprises in Arcane came in Act 3, where fans were surprised to learn what happened – or rather, what didn’t happen – to Viktor at the end of Season 1.
In League of Legends, Viktor is known as the Machine Herald, a mad scientist turned cyborg who believes that fusing people with technology is the key to advancing humanity. By turning people into cyborgs like himself, Viktor believes he can eliminate issues like sickness and hunger, even going so far as to call his vision the “Glorious Evolution”.
This drives a rift between himself and Jayce, who believes that his old friend has gone too far with his experiments, especially as Viktor begins to dabble in removing free will from his test subjects.
Obviously, none of this was present in Season 1, where Viktor even seems to be horrified by his Hexcore experiments going awry. This seems to suggest that Viktor and Jayce’s conflict will instead be explored in Season 2 or beyond, with greater depth and nuance possibly being added to their perspectives compared to the game.
Vander will return… as Warwick
This is one of the biggest fan theories for Season 2, so we have to talk about it here. If you’re unfamiliar with League or its lore, Warwick is a man who was captured and turned into a wolf-like creature by Singed. Towards the end of Arcane’s Season 2 announcement, you can hear a snippet of Warwick’s theme, which has led many fans to believe that Warwick may make an appearance in Season 2.
The series itself has also dropped plenty of hints that Singed will turn Vander into Warwick, from Vander’s street nickname being “the Hound of the Underground”, to Warwick’s theme playing during Vander’s Shimmer transformation in Act 1, and Season 1’s final scene with Singed resembling the key illustration from a short story that features both Singed and Warwick.
Adding to this theory are the in-game interactions between Vi, Jinx, and Warwick, which may imply that Warwick has a personal connection to our female leads:
With all this evidence, it would honestly be more surprising if Warwick didn’t turn out to be Vander. Regardless, finding out that their father figure might still be alive (albeit in a more fuzzy form) would definitely make for some interesting character moments between Jinx and Vi.
Singed’s daughter is Orianna
Speaking of Singed, it’s mentioned that he has a daughter, and his last shot in the show sees him holding a locket that contains a portrait of a blond girl with her hair in a bun. This portrait also happens to bear a resemblance to the champion Orianna.
In League of Legends, Orianna is a young girl whose body begins to deteriorate due to chemical poisoning. Desperate to save her, Orianna’s scientist father gradually replaces her body parts with mechanical organs, eventually reaching a point where she barely resembles a human at all.
While she has no relation to Singed in the lore, it’s easy to imagine her story being rewritten to include him, especially since we know Singed’s protégé Viktor may eventually become a cyborg himself.
Singed having a sick daughter he’s trying to cure would explain why he’s determined to learn how to artificially preserve life, and how he knows exactly what Viktor is going through at the end of Season 1. Regardless, we’ll just have to wait and see how this plotline turns out.
Heimerdinger will help Ekko to create the Z-Drive
At the end of Season 1, we see that a now exiled Heimerdinger is living with Ekko and the Firelights, having been impressed by the young boy’s inventing skills. It’s possible that their bond will lead to Heimer helping Ekko to create the Z-Drive, Ekko’s iconic time-turning device that allows him to rewind time by a few seconds.
In his lore, Ekko creates the Z-Drive on his own, using a discarded Hextech crystal shard as its power source. In Arcane, Heimer might use his connections to the Piltover Council to procure a Hextech shard for Ekko – if he can be convinced that Ekko can be trusted to wield it.
At the same time, it seems pretty unlikely that Arcane might start introducing time travel into its storyline, since there’s already so much on the writers’ plate to balance. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if they can pull it off.
“C” might appear in Arcane
Our final theory involves “C”, a character from Caitlyn’s lore who served as her original motivation for joining Piltover’s police force, the Enforcers. A renowned criminal, “C” kidnapped Caitlyn’s parents, which drove her to rescue them by herself. Though they were thankfully unharmed, the incident inspired Caitlyn to join the Enforcers in order to solve the mystery of “C”’s true identity.
“C” was later revealed (or at least heavily implied) to be fan-favourite Legends of Runeterra character Corina Veraza, a Zaunite Chembaron with plant-based abilities, who has been featured heavily alongside Caitlyn in content for the League of Legends card game.
With Silco now dead, it’s safe to say Zaun’s criminal underworld will be in disarray without its leader. This would be the perfect opportunity for a new antagonist to take his place – and who better than a character who has a lore connection to one of our leads?
This is definitely one of the more far-out theories surrounding Arcane, but you have to admit it’d be cool to see a Legends of Runeterra character like Corina being given the spotlight in an animated series.
Those are our theories for Season 2 of Arcane, based on the original lore for League of Legends! Have any theories of your own? Leave them in the comments below.
